Thursday, January 31, 2019

Strong in the back and weak in the head is a term that farmers were familiar with when jobs on the farm were back-breaking, tedious and when health and well-being were not the prime consideration. Much has changed at Stugdale Farm near Flaxton where a young John Rycroft would muck out the fold yard with a gripe - a four-pronged fork.

He was always enormously likeable, even when we were in disagreement. But then once again, in recent years as other people everywhere appeared to go weak in the head, Trevor Phillips turns out to be among the few adults left in the room. His interventions (can thiệp) in Britain’s public debate (thảo luận công khai) these days are always thoughtful (thâm trầm, sâu sắc; có suy nghĩ, chín chắn, thận trọng), humane (nhân đạo, nhân đức, nhân văn; động lòng trắc ẩn), informed and always worth listening to.

We did not talk about depression growing up. There was no time to be “weak in the head” and I cannot remember anyone in our family—immediate or extended—seeing a mental health counselor. Maybe it was the stigma, the cost or both, but my mother never took a day off. “Mental health days” were for white people. This is not unique to black culture, but we did not seek treatment for depression (trầm cảm), drug addictions, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress (căng thẳng hậu sang chấn) or any number of other maladies (bệnh tật, chứng bệnh; tệ nạn, tình trạng không lành mạnh) that beset (quấy rối, gây phiền toái; bao vây, vây quanh) us. We were supposed to be bigger than whatever it was.

Fresh off the back of performing the first-ever far side lunar landing, China has made history once again – by growing plants on the Moon for the first time.

In photos released today, Tuesday January 15 by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), it was revealed that an organic experiment on the Chang’e 4 lunar lander had been successful, and cotton seeds had grown buds on the surface of the Moon.

This lander touched down on the Moon on January 2, with a rover later being deployed on the surface. But while the rover recently had a small nap, science on the lander itself has continued unabated (không suy giảm).

The organic biosphere experiment on board the lander consists of cotton shoots and other germinated (nảy mầm) plants, contained inside an airtight container. The cotton seeds were the first to sprout out of these plants, with rapeseed (hạt cải dầu) and potato seeds later following suit.

Cash is being poured into China's economy in a move to prop up weakening growth. The People's Bank of China, or PBOC, injected a record US$83 billion into the country's financial system on Wednesday to avoid a cash crunch.

Policymakers have made it clear that they will step up stimulus measures this year to protect jobs as the economy shows signs of cooling to a 28-year low.

But a raft of measures in 2018 appears to have had little effect with the latest data suggesting the slowdown is gathering pace.

“The news is clear – the economy needs help,” Trinh Nguyen, a senior economist for emerging Asia at Natixis, a French corporate and investment bank in Hong Kong, told Reuters.

The billionaire entrepreneur and founder of Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company, volunteered that he could build a $1 billion high speed tunnel to help ease Sydney traffic after NSW MP Jeremy Buckingham asked how much such a plan would cost.

Buckingham tweeted Musk: “I’m a lawmaker in Sydney, which is choking with traffic. How much to build a 50km tunnel through the Blue Mountains and open up the west of our State?”

“About $15M/km for a two way high speed transit, so probably around $750M plus maybe $50M/station,” Musk replied.

On Netflix, you can watch other people freak out about “tidying up” for 2019.

Entropy, that unpleasant byproduct of consumerism, has been a subject of reality TV almost since that genre’s genesis. From “Clean House” to “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” we’ve seen how pathological our relationship to stuff can be, and how powerless so many of us are to dig out from under it all. The home purge show is now as rigorously structured as the hero’s journey or a Petrarchan sonnet. In it we see the act of decluttering as a quest, and the tidied home as a proxy for our reborn selves.

It’s a form wonderfully suited to the animistic methods of Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidying guru who taught the world to kiss its socks goodbye with a novel organizing principle: If your belongings don’t spark joy, thank them for their service and show them the door.

Her first book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up,” published in the U.S. in 2014, made her a superstar — maybe the world’s first decluttering celebrity — and a publishing behemoth; it is still a best-seller, with over 8.5 million copies sold in over 40 languages.

Especially in the absence of David Warner and Steve Smith, Australia's batting seems as weak as a kitten.

Weak as a kitten, but determined to search for and hopefully find the athlete in me again, I knew instinctively (theo bản năng, do bản năng) that pursuing (theo đuổi) sport (môn thể thao) would help save me.

She was as weak as a kitten and she sat in the emergency department (phòng cấp cứu). Eventually I got a very nice nurse (y tá) to bring her in and get her on a trolley (xe đẩy) because she was about to faint (ngất).

He practically had to lift me into it the first few times, as I was weak as a kitten, but he’s always there to lift me up, body and soul, grant my wish, be by my side, make me happy. I’m so blessed to have a truly good, strong, tall, gentle man to lean on in every moment of weakness.

...But not all rural parents accept the inevitability of poor schools and left-behind children. It’s become increasingly common for rural families to enroll their children in urban, closer-to-home school systems in smaller cities and for one parent — usually the mom — to quit their job, rent an apartment close to their kid’s school, and devote themselves full time to caring for their child’s every need, usually while the other parent works elsewhere. Known in China as peidu, this practice essentially amounts to sacrificing one parent’s potential income in a long-term gamble on their child’s future. The risks are high — and for rural families, the financial pressures caused by the lost income are sometimes unbearable — but if it works and the child in question tests into a good university, it can change the entire family’s fortunes.

...Peidu can be just as taxing mentally as it is financially. By risking so much on their children’s education, peidu parents’ self-worth becomes linked to their kids’ academic fortunes. And if their children don’t perform well, parents often blame themselves.

The consequences of failure reach far beyond embarrassment. A child who fails the nation’s college entrance examination can leave rural peidu families in a state of despair. After almost two decades of sacrifice, they’re left with no savings and with no hope of a brighter future.

Amazon can leverage its proprietary data from AWS (Amazon Web Services). Amazon's edge is that most of the best technology start-ups are built on its services. Amazon has a lot of information about how much these companies are spending, what services they use, what technologies they use, and more.

The AWS data could be extremely predictive and give Amazon early signs that companies are growing fast or reaching an inflection point. And it can use the data as a better diligence check of a company … for instance, the data could help determine which companies that claim they have "AI" are real and which are just marketing.

Using this data to invest in public companies would likely not be legal since it could be deemed as inside information. But using it for private companies is something Amazon could do.

For just 1,000 Japanese yen or $8.89 an hour, those who use Nishimoto's service will find a middle-aged man listening to their woes (nỗi muộn phiền, nỗi thống khổ), doing chores (việc vặt), or offering life advice (lời khuyên cuộc sống).

In Japan, middle-aged men are often made fun of for their stereotypical receding hairline, rotund (béo, phục phịch, tròn trĩnh, mập mạp) beer bellies (bụng bia) and unhygienic (mất vệ sinh) habits (thói quen), shared Nishimoto, and he set up the service with the intention to dispel (xua đuổi đi, xua tan) all the negative stereotypes (hình mẫu) of Japanese 'uncles'.

One infamous AI fail was biblical: Matthew 26:41 “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” machine translated to “the vodka is strong but the meat is soft” when reversed from Russian.

Star turns of the tasting menu include a vivid tower of beetroot (củ cải đường), ricotta (pho mát ý trắng, mềm) and smoked eel (lươn hun khói), a lobster (tôm hùm) tail made doubly rich with deep carrot and caramel flavours — and that cheeseboard, so alluring it's embarrassing not to be able to do it more justice. We try. We really try. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak and brimful. We've been utterly vanquished by Alyn Williams at the Westbury, but in the most pleasurably genteel (quý phái, thượng lưu, trưởng giả), Mayfair-esque way possible.

For decades, Philip has put duty first, whatever the cost. During the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, it meant shivering without a coat in the rain for four hours during the Thames river pageant. It was Philip, a brave young wartime naval officer, who particularly wanted a waterborne tribute to his wife of 64 years, and the Queen was happy to do it his way. It must have occurred to palace advisers that for this couple of such great age to spend the entire time on their feet was at least unwise and at worst, foolish. But Prince Philip is stubborn, and while fit young people all around this upright, elderly man wilted in the long hours of a wet and chilly afternoon on the river, he stuck to the business at hand. The upshot was an infection and a stay in hospital. It was partly because of that experience that the prince decided to retire. ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,’ he laughingly told one retainer at the time.

Agama Yoga, which is located on the Thai island of Koh Phangan, shut down for “restructuring” in September after the Guardian published allegations by 14 women accusing the school of facilitating rape, sexual assault and misogynist (ghét đàn bà) teachings at the hands of its leader, Swami Vivekananda Saraswati, a Romanian whose real name is Narcis Tarcau, for 15 years.

It’d also be nice if he offered us more of his crackpot (người có suy nghĩ lập dị), faux (giả mạo, nhái)-profound, down-home (giản dị, không phô trương, bình dị), reverse-Confucian sayings – usually along the lines of “Some say a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, but I say a weak is no chainer than its linkest strong” – but beggars can’t be choosers.

A recent case study revealed that the fraudulent (không trung thực, lừa dối; chiếm đoạt được hoặc làm được bằng cách lừa đảo, phi pháp) use of paper catch certificates, and lack of an EU-wide system for cross-checking import documents, means unscrupulous (không có nguyên tắc đạo đức) operators can still play the system and find the weakest links to get their illegal catch to market. As the old adage has it, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Action is urgently needed to ensure that EU countries act robustly and in concert, supported by fit-for-purpose modern tools, to effectively shut out illegal catch and maintain the Union’s deserved reputation as a global leader in this field.

He believes that this problem is the key obstacle to industrial growth in Serbia and the Balkans. “In winter Serbian cities choke with smoke as the major fuels in our country are still wood and coal. Investors are not satisfied with our gas infrastructure. And this all is a big obstacle to our economic growth. The EU knows that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link and the weakest link is the Balkans. The Americans are forcing the Europeans to be tough on Russia, but they cannot do it at the expense of the German economy. Serbia lets them do it – we consume just 2 billion cubic meters a year and we have fallen victims to global gas politics,” Djukic said.

Valet-parking droids will go on trial at Gatwick in August, called STAN

Stan isn’t some ghostly valet (đầy tớ, người hầu) from a budget (ngân sách, eo hẹp về tiền nong) American horror (kinh dị) film though, but a small forklift-style robot that will literally pick your car up and drop it into an ultra-tight space without even needing to see your keys.

Created by Stanley Robotics and set to be trialled at Gatwick Airport in August this year, the little droid will then use your flight numbers to ensure that your car is ready and waiting back at the drop-off/pick-up cabin on your return from holiday.

...The main aim for Stan is to increase the number of cars that can be parked in any given area, and the trial at Gatwick should allow space for 270 robotically parked cars where you and I could only fit 170.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

The EU might back down on its demand for unannounced, on-site inspections; the U.S. might be more accepting of the rights of European regulators to supervise their own patch. Something as simple as better communication may sound like weak tea in the current environment. But while champagne might be nicer, this would at least be a start.

In the not too distant past, saving energy was the basic idea, which basically meant remembering to turn off the lights when leaving the room. That’s pretty weak tea, but here in the US even the mention of energy efficiency is enough to set off a firestorm of protest among the usual suspects. Remember the light bulb wars? No? Well, to make a long story short, the anti-efficiency side of the US political spectrum eventually lost the light bulb battle. However, they are still carrying the anti-efficiency torch.

Harris fits the intersectional bill of the Left to a T: half-black, half-Indian, a woman, and as an added bonus, fairly young and attractive. She carries herself well and although her national record would be considered extremely weak tea in a normal election cycle, compared to failed Senate candidate and former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke and even President Trump, she's practically a political veteran (cựu chiến binh; người từng trải, người kỳ cựu). Harris passes the likeability test that killed Democrats in 2016, beating Hillary Clinton in that contest multiple times over.

...Known in Japanese as shisa kanko, pointing-and-calling works on the principle of associating one’s tasks with physical movements and vocalizations to prevent errors by “raising the consciousness levels of workers”—according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Japan. Rather than rely on a worker’s eyes or habit alone, each step in a given task is reinforced physically and audibly to ensure the step is both complete and accurate.

In the rail context, when train drivers wish to perform a required speed check, they do not simply glance at a display. Rather, the speedometer will be physically pointed at, with a call of “speed check, 80”—confirming the action taking place, and audibly confirming the correct speed. For station staff who ensure the platform-side tracks are free of debris or fallen passengers, a visual scan alone is not sufficient. Instead, the attendant will point down the track and sweep their arm along the length of the platform—eyes following the hand—before declaring all clear. The process repeats as the train departs, ensuring no bags—or passengers—are caught hanging from the train’s closed doors.

Now, a new study from researchers at Columbia Business School and University College London finds that people higher in agreeableness—a trait that's exemplified by kindness (tử tế), "niceness" generosity, and warmth—also tend to have poorer financial outcomes than those lower in the trait.

...But it’s not that agreeable people are less smart or less able to make money, but they do seem to care less about it—so they may not handle money as well as less agreeable people. "We found that agreeableness was associated with indicators (chỉ số) of financial hardship (khó khăn về tài chính), including lower savings (tiết kiệm ít), higher debt (nợ nhiều) and higher default rates," said study author Joe Gladstone. "This relationship appears to be driven by the fact that agreeable people simply care less about money and therefore are at higher risk of money mismanagement."

* Individuals who score high on neuroticism (tâm lý bất ổn) are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.

Elbert Hubbard once said that a committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour. Herbert Prochnow once joked that a committee of three gets things done if two don't show up.

It’s often said that a committee is a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours. If you don’t want your meeting to be a waste of time then make sure you take minutes. The reason for the meeting should be included in the minutes, what the meeting was about, when it took place, where it was held and who attended.

A woman has revealed her shock after a man took her on a 'surprise' first date - to his grandmother's funeral.

The anonymous singleton shared her story with her friend Raychel, from Leeds, who screengrabbed their hilarious Whatsapp conversation and posted it on Twitter, where it has since gone viral.

Revealing her dilemma the friend, who Raychel has saved in her phone as Bridget Jones, recounted how she'd asked her Tinder match where he was taking her, only to be told 'wear a black dress and I'll surprise you'.

Having initially found his approach 'romantic', her ardour quickly cooled when he picked her up and drove her to a crematorium (nơi hỏa táng, lò hỏa thiêu), and she realised she was at 'his nan's funeral'.

Moroccan woman is accused of (bị buộc tội) killing her boyfriend in the United Arab Emirates — then cooking and serving his remains in a traditional homemade dish, officials said.

The woman, whose identity wasn't released, allegedly wanted revenge because her boyfriend dumped (đổ rác, vứt bỏ, gạt bỏ; "đá") her after she financially supported him over the course of their seven-year relationship.

Prosecutors in Al-Ain emirate said the girlfriend killed the victim three months ago, but she wasn't arrested until his tooth (răng) was found inside her blender (máy xay).